Diablo 4 devs promise massive difficulty increase in Season 8 & players are split

Blizzard’s plan to tweak the difficulty of Torment levels in Diablo 4 Season 8 has been met with mixed reception by players.

The four-tier Torment levels replaced Diablo 4’s World Tiers in the endgame with the launch of Update 2.0. Blizzard tied endgame progression to The Pit, so players had to complete Pit Tier 20 to unlock Torment 1, then beat Pit Tier 65 to access Torment 4.

This will change in Season 8. In a Campfire Chat on March 7, developers noted that progression speed and the number of players who hit Torment 4 had doubled since Season 6, with 50% of players reaching the higher tier in Season 7.

“The intention is that Torment 4 is top-level content for the top 10% of players,” the team told fans. As such, Season 8’s Torment 1 will unlock at Pit Tier 10 and Torment 4 “will be equivalent to Season 7 Pit Tier 76.” Players have mixed feelings so far.

Diablo 4 fans react to upcoming Pit Tier and Torment adjustments

One user on Reddit shared concerns that Blizzard’s goal of making Torment 4 more “aspirational” will result in Season Journey objectives and rewards being gated behind increasingly difficult enemy encounters.

This fear stems from Season 7’s flying pet being locked behind Season Journey tasks that mandated Torment 4 gameplay. However, the Diablo team has yet to clarify whether or not T4 will be required for Season 8 progress.

Either way, while several other fans echoed the original poster’s thoughts, others said they wouldn’t mind stricter requirements.

One person responded by asking, “Aspirational content shouldn’t be rewarded? Why should seasonal journey be trivial?”

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The raven is D4’s first-ever flying pet.

Others argued that players who reach Torment 4 should be rewarded with something extra. As another Redditor put it, “You don’t ‘need’ the flying pet and you don’t need to complete season journey. You can consider that a reward for making torment 4.”

The Diablo 4 Forums have engaged in similar discussions since the Campfire Chat, with some calling devs “completely clueless” for targeting 10% of the player base with the more challenging endgame content.

“HOW does intentionally excluding 90% of a game’s players with ‘aspirational’ even come to mind?” someone else commented.

Again, countervailing arguments maintain this will be good for the experience as a whole, especially after many in the community complained about the ease of progression in Season 7.

Of course, there’s no telling how exactly this will all play out until the new season actually goes live. Following a delay, Season 8 is now on track to launch on April 29.